Mt. Rushmore of Game Directors

Arsic

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Let's get one thing out of the way first: Why no Miyamoto!? He hasn't actually directed many games, and the best thing he truly directed is Mario 64.

With that out of the way then who are the 4 all time greatest directors and why?

For me it's :

Kojima (Self explanatory. He's THE director and a visionary at the craft)

Miyazaki (The modern man Kojima. Everything he touches and directs is gold)

Howard (Hate him or love him, Todd has been pushing open world narrative RPGs for us for a long time. Much of what he has done has paved the road for others to layer on.)

Mikami (Started resident evil. Loved evil within. He understands survival horror better than anyone. )

The 4th spot is a tough one. Inafune, Mikami, Sakaguchi, etc can go here but the issue is when you look at lists of actual directed games these visionaries aren't responsible for much compared to the top 3 on my list.
 
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Arsic said:
Kojima
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Cracks Me Up Steve Harvey GIF by ABC Network
 
Itsuno may be the goat of action games. I could see Harada as well but he's confined himself in fighting games. Itsuno is more varied.
 
Where is Druckmann? 2 GOTY winners and his 3rd game was nominated(Uncharted 4). Haters gonna hate, but Intergalactic gonna be better than Death Stranding 2 and Elder Scrolls 6
 
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For my personal tastes

- Kamiya
- Miyazaki
- Harada
- Vincke
- John Carmack (not credited as director for early iD games but nobody else is either)
 
Fumito Ueda - ICO, SotC, TLG
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Todd Howard (i think he's fallen in recent years but his Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim run is what puts him up there for me.
Yoshinori Kitase
 
- Al Lowe : the father of the legendary Leisure Suit Larry series
- Jane Jensen : the mother of the legendary Gabriel Knight series
- Masato Kato : mostly a writer, but he directed Chrono Cross, so that counts !
- Takashi Tezuka : agreed, Miyamoto is rather irrelevant as a director, most of the masterpieces attributed to him were actually directed by Tezuka - he's the real genius ( :messenger_smirking: *runs away*)
 
Arsic said:
Look up what he's actually directed and get back to me.
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Ya he directed the original mario, the original donkey kong, and the original legend of zelda. And he directed mario 64 which elevated the 3d platform space and was the gold standard at the time and is the gold standard today because of how legendary it is. He created 3 of the greatest franchises in history. Enough said.
 
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Fumito Ueda, Kojima and Hidetaka Miyazaki. Don't know about the fourth one, there's just too many that deserve to be on there tbh. Though there's someone that I personally believe doesn't get the recognition he deserves, and that's Patrice Desilets. He created Assassin's Creed, and AC is responsible for so many things that are standard in modern gaming, whether you like them or not. Be it how open worlds ended up being designed (like the tower mechanic even making its way to Breath of the Wild), or the combat (I still think AC's combat was the baseline which Batman Arkham took and perfected), even the eagle vision stuff that many ended up calling detective vision arriving in Batman or Witcher 3. He's 100 % one of the more influential directors.
 
CrimsonTide said:
According to Wiki

OG Donkey Kong Trilogy
Mario 1-3 (lost levels being 2)
Mario 64

He mostly is producer of games or designer that is true
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He also directed the original zelda along with tekuza. He's the creator of donkey kong, mario, and the legend of zelda. Dude is the best game director in history and the best game designer ever.
 
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Miyamoto has no peers sorry and is in a league of his own. You know you're the GOAT when you have literal theme parks built off the franchises you created 'mario and donkey kong'. The brands he created will transcend history and will be known from generation to generation of gamers for as long as gaming exists.



that-s-why-he-s-the-goat-puppet-chef-us8b5zuocsyhaqjc.gif
 
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Sebastian1295 said:
Miyamoto has no peers sorry and is in a league of his own. You know you're the GOAT when you have literal theme parks built off the franchises you created 'mario and donkey kong'. The brands he created will transcend history and will be known from generation to generation of gamers.
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Hard for anyone to argue against

Maybe instead of Mt. Rushmore

We call it Mt. Miyamoto and that is the new expression for goats?
 
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Shigeru Miyamoto (he "invented" Jump'n'Runs and his overall influence)
Hideo Kojima (he showed us that games can be like movies, with a huge impact)
John Carmack&John Romero (because of their engines and games like Doom and Wolfenstein, with a huge impact)
Shinji Mikami (take away Resident Evil and would be capcom the same like today? would we have DMC, Onimusha etc.?)

Honorable mention is Jason Jones, because of Halo (no joke).
 
Sebastian1295 said:
A list without miyamoto should be a crime.

skeptical.gif
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This. It would be like excluding Washington from Mount Rushmore because his presidency ended over 200 years ago. Just profoundly idiotic logic. The games and series that Miyamoto created are still massively influencial and his design philosophy is still hugely important to Nintendo's ethos, even if he hasn't directed a game in a while.

The other three slots are trickier. Howard and Miyazaki are decent choices, although their influence doesn't extend too far beyond the specific brand of RPGs that they're known for. John Carmack was a technical wizard, and may deserve a spot for that alone, but he wasn't really an "artist" and the brilliance of Doom was very much a function of the full team. Hmmm.

I guess I would go with:
Shigeru Miyamoto
Yu Suzuki
John Carmack (in spite of my reservations)
And ...
Hidetaka Miyazaki (filling the Teddy Roosevelt "it's probably too soon to judge but he's impossible to ignore right now" slot)

I could be convinced that Kojima or Newell or Meier deserve that last slot though.

Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, there's a strong argument to be made that the final slot should go to Will Wright. I'm not a huge sim game fan, but it's impossible to deny his influence.
 
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Sebastian1295 said:
That got a good chuckle out of me lol. Ya it's just miyamoto and then everyone else. Miyamoto approves of Mt. Miyamoto.

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It's just true lol What he did with JUST Mario alone is beyond anything imaginable. Go ask anyone age 5-95 if they know mario or donkey kong. Course they know

I am all for Kojima and Miyazaki and many others have mentioned here, but this cat invented his own league and no one else can be in it!
 
Reizo Ryuu said:
I don't do drugs, unlike kojima and his crackpot nonsense people delude themselves into believe is genius 🤷‍♂️
Biggest hack of all time.
No Way Do Not Want GIF by MOODMAN


mechanics wise, if he was actually responsible for all the design aspects of the games, he's a good game designer, but director? LMFAO
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We're talking about game direction not movie direction (and he's also brilliant at that), you're thinking about story writing.
 
blacktout said:
This. It would be like excluding Washington from Mount Rushmore because his presidency ended over 200 years ago. Just profoundly idiotic logic. The games and series that Miyamoto created are still massively influencial and his design philosophy is still hugely important to Nintendo's ethos, even if he hasn't directed a game in a while.

The other three slots are trickier. Howard and Miyazaki are decent choices, although their influence doesn't extend too far beyond the specific brand of RPGs that they're known for. John Carmack was a technical wizard, and may deserve a spot for that alone, but he wasn't really an "artist" and the brilliance of Doom was very much a function of the full team. Hmmm.

I guess I would go with:
Shigeru Miyamoto
Yu Suzuki
John Carmack (in spite of my reservations)
And ...
Hidetaka Miyazaki (filling the Teddy Roosevelt "it's probably too soon to judge but he's impossible to ignore right now" slot)

I could be convinced that Kojima or Newell or Meier deserve that last slot though.
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I was doing some research and yoshinori kitase who's not well known has a case on the mount rushmore as well. He was a director on all these GOAT classics back in the day. Insanely impressive track record and then he kinda did the miyamoto thing and stopped directing games.

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CrimsonTide said:
Strong case for sure

Square STILL has not seen their FF series have near the impact as back then, well in my opinion anyhow
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It's hard to list best game directors honestly because alot of the GOAT ones or elite ones direct a few games and then move into another role in the company etc. So they might've still had a huge influence on other games that they weren't directors of per say, but they still contributed heavily to its success. I agree on square screwing up FF hard and it's not even close to it was at its peak. FFX is still too me the best FF game hands down and one of the greatest JRPG's ever.
 
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1. Shigeru Miyamoto - the Father of Modern Game Design
2. Hideo Kojima - Pioneer of Cinematic Storytelling (like it or not Neil just build upon Uncharted 2 ideas.)
4. John Carmack - revolutionized FPS
3. Sid Meier - Strategy Game Titan

This people history will remember. They are not best, sometimes they are not first.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
It's hard to list best game directors honestly because alot of the GOAT ones or elite ones direct a few games and then move into another role in the company etc. So they might've still had a huge influence on other games that they weren't directors of per say, but they still contributed heavily to its success. I agree on square screwing up FF hard and it's not even close to it was at its peak. FFX is still too me the best FF game hands down and one of the greatest JRPG's ever.
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This post reminded me FFX remaster has not been played by me and it is a shame (played the OG back near launch)
 
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